The authenticity of images is important in several contexts, such as evidence in a court of law and accuracy in newspaper stories. However, with today's sophisticated software tools, anyone with a computer and some software can easily create fake images that are not easily detected as fake by most casual observers and quite often not even by trained professionals.
The fake image (i.e., digitally altered image) may mislead and or provide inaccurate information to those who view the image. The digitally altered image may also have been edited to contain secret information, which will be decipherable by another user to whom the altered image is sent to facilitate a “secret communication” between or among two or more individuals. Thus, it would be beneficial to be able to identify digitally altered images.